ESRB Mobile Rating App Now Available

The ESRB has released an app for your camera-equipped Android phone or iPhone that let’s you take a picture of a game, and receive a summary of it as well as why it got the rating it did.

In other words, you can now pick up the game box and have your phone tell you what the box you’re holding normally would, except now you get to pay for the data (!!!).

But seriously, apparently, this app does actually go deeper than the blood and gore rating on the box, explaining the context a little more.

I guess this could be pretty useful for the gaming illiterate parents who feel they know how to buy games for their children, but realistically, I find it hard to believe that a mom is gonna pick up a title called Gears of War, see “intense violence” and “blood and gore” on the box beside an “M” rating, and go, “wait wait wait, let’s be fair to the muscle bound, angry looking, chainsaw-gun carrying fridge-men on the cover and find out a bit more so I can know for sure if this game really is wrong for my little Timmy.”